Outside editorial: Guerrilla marketing at its worst

Duuude! How's this for a really cool concept? Let's promote our TV-show client by putting up dozens of blinking electric thingies in cities all over the country! Doesn't that rock? Are we downtown or what? Are we - wha? You mean the public and police might mistake them in post-9/11 America for terrorist bombs and go all homeland security? Why, we never thought of that.

So, it seems, will be the defense of one Sam Ewen, head man at the Greenwich Village firm hired by the Cartoon Network to generate buzz for a program called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Buzz it sure got, after Boston cops shut the town when the blinking thingies got reported by citizens.

Boston's mayor is pushing for prosecutions, but even if charges are not forthcoming, numerous parties are guilty of criminal stupidity at Turner Broadcasting, which runs the Cartoon Network. We await the rationale of Ewen, whose firm, Interference, boasts of the "edgy" things it does.

Do tell, Mr. Ewen: Why would even such a premium-grade knucklehead as yourself have thought this was a good idea? What planet do you live on?